Files describe doctor who experimented on prisoners
The SS were notoriously efficient when it came to hiding and destroying documents that detailed their extermination work. But in this case, there must have been a slip-up. A German homeowner who lives near the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has uncovered a stash of more than 200 secret SS documents—documents he found while doing a restoration of his home. The files discuss the work of SS Doctor Victor Capesius, who assisted Josef Mengele in conducting medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Survivors have testified that Capesius force-fed them experimental drugs. Said Auschwitz survivor Zoe Polanska Palmer: “I remember one of the SS doctors [Capesius] holding my jaw open and forcing pils down my throat. I’m still very wary of men wearing white coats.” Capesius was convicted in Germany in 1959 and sentenced to nine years in jail; he died in 1985.